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Dear readers, it has been quiet on this blog for 2 weeks now and it will stay quiet here over time

I moved the blog to another place on the web under a different name www.bluebeat.org. NoFishLeft will come back as a campaign against overfishing of our oceans and will soon be announced on the site of BlueBeat.org

BlueBeat.org is our ocean education initiative, a first start of an organization about and around every threat the ocean and us people living on this fast blue planet facing. We decided to switch to another name and website so we can slowly creating a better and more advanced, broad website around ocean education. WordPress blogs unfortunately have there limited.

2011 will be the year of the ocean!! let’s put ocean conservation on the agenda worldwide

Commercial whaling nearly wiped out every species of large whales in the 20th century. International whaling regulations were ignored or ineffective. As a result, many species remain endangered today.

In 1986 the International Whaling Commission established a moratorium on commercial whaling. Iceland, Norway, and Japan continue to defy the whaling ban. Since the moratorium began, these nations have killed over 25,000 more whales, including endangered species.

Artist Dianna Cohen shares some tough truths about plastic pollution in the ocean and in our lives — and some thoughts on how to free ourselves from the plastic gyre.

Dianna Cohen is the co-founder of the Plastic Pollution Coalition, a group that addresses the pervasive problem of plastic pollution. She was inspired to co-found the group by her work as an artist — because her chosen material is the ubiquitous plastic bag. She writes: “Having worked with the plastic bag as my primary material for the past fifteen years, all of the obvious references to recycling, first-world culture, class, high and low art give way to an almost formal process which reflects the unique flexibility of the medium.”

With the Plastic Pollution Coalition, she helps to raise awareness of ocean waste — the majority of which is nondegradable plastic — and everyday strategies to cut down the amount of plastic we use and throw away.

Commercial fishing around the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean ends today making it the largest “no-take” marine reserve in the world.

The remaining fishing licenses will expire at midnight, following the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s (FCO) decision to create the reserve in April.

The coalition government decided to proceed with the reserve, despite its austerity budget, after £3.5 million in private funding was offered by the Bertarelli Foundation, in a deal organized by the British-based Blue Marine Foundation, a charity spawned by the documentary film, The End of the Line.

The creation of the new sanctuary around the British Indian Ocean Territory, where commercial fishing will be banned, serves to highlight the slowness with which the international community has moved towards reaching a goal set almost a decade ago to protect marine life.

In 2002, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the World Summit on Sustainable Development made a commitment to protect 10 per cent of the world’s oceans by 2012.

With only 15 months to go, it is estimated that just 1.17 per cent of the world’s oceans are under some form of protection, and a mere 0.08 per cent classified as “no-take” zones.

Early on Saturday morning, government representatives at a UN conference on biodiversity held in Nagoya, Japan, put the 2012 deadline back to 2020.

Marine experts warned that it is scandalous that the original deadline will not be met, and said the 10 per cent target falls far short of what is needed. A third of ocean waters need protection to give marine species a fighting chance of survival, they said.

The shortfall between target and achievement was described as “massive” by Dr Heather Koldewey, manager of the Zoological Society of London’s international marine and freshwater conservation programme.

The failure to get anywhere near the original goal would result in “a massive loss of marine resources and, with that, an associated loss of people’s livelihoods”, she warned.

“In terms of maintaining marine environments in some kind of operational form, science believes that actual protection should be in the region of 30 to 40 per cent.”

Professor Charles Sheppard, from the University of Warwick also says more no-take marine reserves are vital to maintain sufficient life in our oceans.

He said: “Governments need to stand up to the fishing industry lobby before it is too late. We cannot afford to have any more delay by governments in honouring their commitments to protect areas of ocean.”

Alistair Gammell, director of the Pew Environment Group’s Chagos campaign, said: “It is scandalous that governments are nowhere near the targets agreed to in 2002. The consequence of that failure is that fish and other species are declining in nearly every place you look.”

The Chagos reserve covers an area of 544,000 square kilometres – twice the size of Britain. Its waters are home to the critically endangered hawksbill turtle, as well as green sea turtles, dolphins and one of the world’s largest coral reefs – a habitat for more than 1,200 species of coral and fish. It also has nearly 100 seamounts and underwater features thought to harbour undiscovered forms of life.

Marine life in the waters of the Chagos Archipelago has been hit hard by overfishing. The Zoological Society of London estimates that, over the past five years, around 60,000 sharks, an equivalent number of rays and many other species have been caught there as “by-catch” when fishing for tuna.

In an attempt to prevent the reserve becoming little more than a park on paper, a fisheries patrol vessel, paid for by private donation, will police the waters to ensure the fishing ban is not breached.

In a statement last night a UK Foreign Office spokesman said: “The Government believes that a Marine Protected Area (MPA) is the right way ahead for furthering the environmental protection of the British Indian Ocean Territory.

“As the world’s largest MPA, the UK’s example is encouraging others to do the same in other important and vulnerable areas.”

Dolphins, whales, and dugongs will be safe from hunting in the waters surrounding the Pacific nation of Palau. At the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Nagoya, Japan, Palau’s Minister of the Environment, Natural Resources and Tourism, Harry Fritz, announced the establishment of a marine mammal sanctuary covering over 230,000 square miles (60,000 square kilometers) of the nation’s waters, an area the size of Mongolia.

The dugong is listed as Vulnerable to extinction by the IUCN Red List. Photo by: Julien Willem.

“Palau’s dugongs are the most isolated and endangered population in the world. We also have at least 11 species of cetaceans in our waters, including a breeding population of Sperm Whales and possibly as many as 30 other species of whales and dolphins that utilize our EEZ. This sanctuary will promote sustainable whale-watching tourism, already a growing multi-million dollar global industry, as an economic opportunity for the people of Palau,” Fritz said in Nagoya.

Already, last year Palau declared its waters a sanctuary for sharks. Sharks have been decimated worldwide, with some species’ population plunging by 99 percent, due to bycatch, overconsumption, and the shark-fin trade, whereby caught sharks’ fins are cut off and the animals are thrown back into the water to die.

Although many populations of whales are rebounding after centuries of commercial whaling, some are still threatened by whaling by Iceland, Japan, and Norway, as well as pollution. Dolphins are often killed as bycatch and suffer from widespread marine pollution.

“Palau, which once supported the Japanese position on commercial whaling, now supports conserving marine mammals, along with sharks and other species. By aiding economic development through ecotourism, Palau recognizes the importance of keeping these species alive and thriving,” Dr. Susan Lieberman, director of international policy for the Pew Environment Group, said in a statement, adding that “we call on other countries large and small to follow Palau’s example.”

Palau made its announcement on the Convention’s Ocean Day where protective measures for the ocean were discussed by representatives. Under the convention nations have pledged to protect 10 percent of ocean waters by 2012, but according to a recent report by the Nature Conservancy only 1.17 percent of marine waters are protected.

Underwater filmmaker Mike deGruy has spent decades looking intimately at the ocean. A consummate storyteller, he takes the stage at Mission Blue to share his awe and excitement — and his fears — about the blue heart of our planet.

New interesting must see documentary ‘Bag it’ about plastification of the world! I still believe good documentaries can change our perception of how we threat our earth, here we have a documentary that falls in that category. Go to the website and request a screening @ your school, local community or independent cinema!

BAG IT

information from press kit

“Documentary is a Powerful Look at the Impacts of Plastics on Society”Americans use 60,000 plastic bags every ﬁve minutes, disposable bags that they throw away without muchthought. But where is “away?” Where do the bags and other plastics end up, and at what cost to the environment, marine life and human health?

Bag It follows “everyman” Jeb Berrier as he navigates our plastic world. Jeb is not a radical environmentalist, but an average American who decides to take a closer look at our cultural love affair with plastics. Jeb’s journey in this documentary ﬁlm starts with simple questions: Are plastic bags really necessary? What are plastic bags made from? What happens to plastic bags after they are discarded? What he learns quickly grows far beyond plastic bags.